Joan of Arcadia: Pilot; Jump

I don't even know when the show airs, but I borrowed a friend's DVD of "for your consideration" episodes. It's about a teenage girl who goes on missions from God, who appears in the form of a different person every time she sees him/her. Even though I'm a godless atheist, I have a weird fondness for TV shows about messengers from God who fix people's lives. Actually, I think I just like three-hankie TV shows about people reaching out to help each other. So I was not as surprised as you might expect that I liked JOAN OF ARCADIA.

The excellent cast includes Joe Mantegna as Joan's police chief father and Mary Steenbergen as her mother (either a teacher or school administrator of some kind, I wasn't clear on which.) Joan has an older brother who's in a wheelchair after a car accident, and a younger one who's a science nerd/genius. Joan herself seems pretty average, until God starts telling her to do things.

The dialogue is snappy but not plastic and obnoxious, more BUFFY than sitcom. There's a lot of non-obvious cliche-busting going around-- a bookshop owner with a stereotypically gay manner turns out to be straight, both of Joan's brothers are involved in impending romances with untraditional parties, and in a horrifying moment in the pilot, Joan is put in danger by her own faith in God, when she assumes that a man who approaches her familiarly must be yet another incarnation.

One of the nice things about the show, it seems, is that God just provides a through-line to explain why this one girl is always at the right place to do a good or useful deed, and a reason why she'd know that her actions had an effect. But there's no miracles and no proving to other people (like TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL did) that angels or God exist in order to alight or rekindle their faith. In JOAN OF ARCADIA, the message isn't really, as the credits say, that God is one of us, but that all of us could be God's errand boys-- that what we do matters.

Joan of Arcadia: Pilot; Jump

I don't even know when the show airs, but I borrowed a friend's DVD of "for your consideration" episodes. It's about a teenage girl who goes on missions from God, who appears in the form of a different person every time she sees him/her. Even though I'm a godless atheist, I have a weird fondness for TV shows about messengers from God who fix people's lives. Actually, I think I just like three-hankie TV shows about people reaching out to help each other. So I was not as surprised as you might expect that I liked JOAN OF ARCADIA.

The excellent cast includes Joe Mantegna as Joan's police chief father and Mary Steenbergen as her mother (either a teacher or school administrator of some kind, I wasn't clear on which.) Joan has an older brother who's in a wheelchair after a car accident, and a younger one who's a science nerd/genius. Joan herself seems pretty average, until God starts telling her to do things.

The dialogue is snappy but not plastic and obnoxious, more BUFFY than sitcom. There's a lot of non-obvious cliche-busting going around-- a bookshop owner with a stereotypically gay manner turns out to be straight, both of Joan's brothers are involved in impending romances with untraditional parties, and in a horrifying moment in the pilot, Joan is put in danger by her own faith in God, when she assumes that a man who approaches her familiarly must be yet another incarnation.

One of the nice things about the show, it seems, is that God just provides a through-line to explain why this one girl is always at the right place to do a good or useful deed, and a reason why she'd know that her actions had an effect. But there's no miracles and no proving to other people (like TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL did) that angels or God exist in order to alight or rekindle their faith. In JOAN OF ARCADIA, the message isn't really, as the credits say, that God is one of us, but that all of us could be God's errand boys-- that what we do matters.